Help Buyers Buy: Facilitate The Buy Path, Then Sell

The sales model is a solution placement model. It does a fine job assessing
needs, pitching, presenting, and placing solutions. Yet we close no more than 7%
of prospects from first call, spend huge amounts of money creating
presentations, sites, and marketing materials bring that in a fraction of the
business they were designed to, spend inordinate amounts of resource responding
to RFPs that fail, and attempting to make appointments with prospects who either
reject us or don’t buy. We waste at least 90% of a sales professional’s time. As
a result we hire more people and set our budgets accordingly.

We have great solutions. Our sales folks are professionals. What’s the problem?

The problem is that buyers don’t buy the way we sell. In fact, a purchase is the
last step buyers take along their buy path, and we sit and wait for them to
traverse their steps without having the proper skills to influence their journey
from the start.

A BUYING DECISION IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

To understand how buyers buy, we must understand systems and change. Buying
anything, from a shirt to a company, a training program or a piece of software,
is a change management activity. Something that has existed, and worked
well-enough for a period of time, will be replaced by a relatively unknown
entity. Change. And change is systemic: anything that touches the new element
will be affected in an unknown way and potentially mess up the system. And
systems won’t abide by disruption; we learned that in 6th grade chemistry.

Like all of us, buyers live in systems; everything within them chugs along
together like a set of gears so the system remains stable. Stability – the
status quo – gets maintained with rules and processes and job descriptions and
relationships. Whatever doesn’t fit within the system gets chucked out because
the system is sacrosanct. When there is a problem, the system creates
workarounds so it can continue functioning; the problem then becomes part of the
tapestry of the system. Only when there is no other option will the buyer face
the potential disruption of bringing in something that is outside the system.

In order for buyers to buy and be willing to have something foreign enter their
system, they need to first manage systemic change: they must get buy-in for the
change, design new rules or roles, replace the old solution in a way that
insures equilibrium is maintained, and last but not least, involve the managers,
department heads, and sundry people who will touch the ultimate solution – folks
not necessarily direct stakeholders or decision makers, but folks whose jobs
will be effected by the change. Without managing this change, they will buy
nothing, regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

A buying decision is a systems problem. And sales acts as if the buyer’s problem
were an isolated event.

BUYING INCLUDES A 13 STEP BUY-IN AND CHANGE PROCESS

There are unique change management issues that must be addressed before a
purchase can occur. Indeed: until there is a clear path to change, there is no
way to even know who is a prospect; before every appropriate voice is assembled
and heard, there is no way to define a need. As outsiders focused on placing
solutions, we have no ability to enter into the buyer’s environment and
facilitate these activities because they are idiosyncratic and personal. And the
time it takes them to figure out how to manage the backend change is the length
of the sales cycle.

We’re currently entering at the end of the decision path: the very last thing a
buyer needs is your solution. The last thing. But we can enter earlier. Here’s
what we should be facilitating that is currently outside our purview and skill
sets:

1. All – ALL – who will touch the new solution must have their voices heard.
Usually it takes buyers a while to understand who must be included on the Buying
Decision Team. In a small sale, it’s easier than a larger sale, but the process
is the same.

It’s possible to facilitate our buyers in both assembling the full Buying
Decision Team on the first or second call, and their discovery of the types of
systems change they would need to address. They have to do this anyway: helping
them speeds up the buying process and gets everyone at the table for an
appointment.

2. Before a purchase, every element that would be disrupted needs to know how to
compensate for change: tech folks must figure out their new scheduling or find
outsourced support; sales and marketing must have a unified strategy to share
budget; HR must get the right groups together, etc. It’s unique in each
situation, although totally independent of need.

Sellers can use a facilitation model to navigate buyers through their change
before they sell, so all areas that will be affected will know how to manage the
change and be ready to buy. This speeds up the sales cycles and makes the seller
a part of the Team.

9 out of the 13 steps in a buying decision involve systems change and include
idiosyncratic, historic, and personal activities. Using only the sales model or
marketing, a seller has no place at the table until it’s time to choose a
solution. But we’re missing great opportunities to become real relationship
managers and trusted advisors and suffering much longer sales cycles than
necessary.

USE BUYING FACILITATION? WITH SALES

Selling and buying are two different activities. Change the way you are
entering. Stop:

pitching, presenting, or discussing solutions before buyers have defined their
route to change;

trying to get an appointment until the entire Buying Decision Team is
assembled;

assuming because you’ve spoken to one or two people there is a need;

assuming that because there’s a need it’s a prospect;

basing your sale on your solution;

basing your sale on price (it has nothing to do with anything).

Instead, before selling:

facilitate excellence and buy-in, from the first call with the gatekeeper;

be a neutral navigator throughout the steps of change;

help assemble the complete Buying Decision Team (even for a small sale) with
you on it;

recognize when a system cannot change and when it’s no longer a prospect (it’s
got nothing to do with needing your solution).

Buyers don’t need you: they need to solve a business problem. And the business
problem involves more of a solution than just your product. It’s time to help
buyer’s buy.

Note: In 1986, to help my own sales folks sell, I coded the steps buyers took
before they could buy, from first idea, to assembling the Buying Decision Team,
to managing change, to choosing a solution. At that time I developed the Buying
Facilitation? model to add to our sales techniques, and our business soared. I
needed half the sales folks for triple the close rate. I began teaching the
model to other companies in 1988 with my first program to KLM called ‘Helping
Buyers Buy’. I have been teaching the model to sales folks ever since.

Or consider purchasing
the bundle: Dirty Little Secrets plus my last book Buying
Facilitation?: the new way to sell that influences and expands decisions.
These books were written to be read together, as they offer the full complement
of concepts to help you learn and understand Buying Facilitation? - the new
skill set that gives you the ability to lead buyers through their buying
decisions.